The invention proposes a solution ( 200 ) for controlling logical guest machines ( 110 ), such as virtual machines or logical partitions, in a system management application (and especially in a licensing application). For this purpose, there is provided an enabler ( 220;270 ) running in a physical host machine ( 115 ) implementing the guest machines or in a corresponding console ( 125 ); this enabler gathers information relating to the hardware configuration of the host machine (which information is not available inside the guest machine). The hardware configuration information is then passed to a licensing agent ( 235 ) of the guest machine; for example, the desired result may be achieved by means of dedicated variables or registry keys ( 260 ) that are accessible without providing any user credentials. The licensing agent directly gathers other information, for example, indicating the software products ( 230 ) that are used by the guest machine. The available information is then transmitted by the licensing agent to a runtime server ( 105 ) for the correct management of the guest machine. |